Tech

Recognizing that imaging can sometimes produce unexpected or incidental findings that have consequences for patients and lead to further expensive and potentially harmful investigations, researchers find that clinically relevant incidental findings on chest radiographs in primary care adult patients with acute cough are uncommon.

A new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy finds many children may be at heightened risk for fire and scald burns by virtue of living in substandard housing. Researchers surveyed the homes of 246 low-income families in Baltimore with at least one young child, and found homes with more housing quality code violations were less likely to have a working smoke alarm and safe hot water temperatures. The report is published in the December issue of the journal Pediatrics.

After cellulose, xylan is the most abundant biomass material on Earth, and therefore represents an enormous potential source of stored solar energy for the production of advance biofuels. A major roadblock, however, has been extracting xylan from plant cell walls. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have taken a significant step towards removing this roadblock by identifying a gene in rice plants whose suppression improves both the extraction of xylan and the overall release of the sugars needed to make biofuels.

"Pennsylvania has opened up its doors to fracking in ways that many other states in the U.S. have not," said David Dausey, Ph.D., chair of the Mercyhurst University Public Health Department. "We don't know enough about the environmental and human health effects of fracking and, as a result, Pennsylvania has become the home of experimental fracking."

Dausey discusses his concerns in this month's episode of The Dausey File: Public Health News Today.

Research physicists have demonstrated the first device capable of amplifying the information in a single particle of light without adding noise.

The research collaboration, involving Griffith University, The University of Queensland and University of Science and Technology of China, was able to amplify the noisy quantum state of a single photon subjected to loss, without adding noise in the process; in fact, their amplification reduced the noise in the quantum state.

Traditional Swedish bonad paintings can contain toxic substances such as arsenic, reveals new research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, in which painting conservator and conservation scientist Ingalill Nyström analysed the paint and techniques used in the traditional painted wall hangings from southern Sweden.Previous research into bonad painting has always originated in the humanities, from an art/cultural history perspective.

The heavy ion collisions at CERN should be able to produce the shortest light pulses ever created, according to computer simulations at the Vienna University of Technology which projects pulses so short that they cannot even be measured by today's technological equipment. Now, a method has been proposed to create the world's most precise stopwatch for the world's shortest light pulses, using a detector which is going to be installed at CERN in 2018.

After emerging sometime before 1000 BC, the Maya rose to become the most advanced Pre-Columbian society in the Americas, thriving in jungle cities of tens of thousands of people, such as the one in Guatemala's Tikal National Park. But after reaching its peak between 250 and 900 AD, the Maya civilization began to wane and exactly why has been an enduring mystery to scientists.

How can solar energy be stored so that it can be available any time, day or night, when the sun shining or not? EPFL scientists are developing a technology that can transform light energy into a clean fuel that has a neutral carbon footprint: hydrogen. The basic ingredients of the recipe are water and metal oxides, such as iron oxide, better known as rust. Kevin Sivula and his colleagues purposefully limited themselves to inexpensive materials and easily scalable production processes in order to enable an economically viable method for solar hydrogen production.

COLLEGE STATION – A typical landscaped yard consists of lawn area and ornamental plants. If watered properly, homeowners can see the beauty, pocket some green and save some water, according to a Texas A&M University turfgrass professor.

Supplemental watering of urban lawns and landscaped areas is required to keep the plants healthy through the typical long, hot and dry summers and falls in Texas, according to Dr. Richard White, Texas AgriLife Research turfgrass management scientist in College Station.

When millions of people are bracing themselves for the onslaught of extreme weather, as much information as possible is needed to predict the strength of the impending storm. ESA's SMOS mission again showed its versatility by capturing unique measurements of Hurricane Sandy.

As its name suggests, the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite was designed to measure how much moisture is held in soil and how much salt is held in the surface waters of the oceans.

A fermentation technique once used to make cordite, the explosive propellant that replaced gunpowder in bullets and artillery shells, may find an important new use in the production of advanced biofuels. With the addition of a metal catalyst, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown that the production of acetone, butanol and ethanol from lignocellulosic biomass could be selectively upgraded to the high volume production of gasoline, diesel or jet fuel.

Deep in the inner ear of mammals is a natural battery — a chamber filled with ions that produces an electrical potential to drive neural signals. In today's issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, a team of researchers from MIT, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI) and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) demonstrate for the first time that this battery could power implantable electronic devices without impairing hearing.

Scientists from the University of Leicester have hit upon unique forms of spinal nerve activity that shape output of nerve cell networks controlling motor behaviours.

The breakthrough in the Department of Biology at the University of Leicester is announced today (5pm GMT on Thursday Nov 8) in the journal Current Biology. The three- year study was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

Eye experts and scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered specific cells in the eye which could lead to a new procedure to treat and cure blinding eye conditions.

Led by Professor Andrew Lotery, the study found that cells called corneal limbal stromal cells, taken from the front surface of the eye have stem cell properties and could be cultured to create retinal cells.